


Man Out Of Time

by jmtorres



Category: Life on Mars, Torchwood
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Present Tense, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-20
Updated: 2007-02-20
Packaged: 2017-10-09 13:10:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/87851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jmtorres/pseuds/jmtorres
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can never go home again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Man Out Of Time

When Torchwood waltzes into C.I.D., everything shuts down for five days. Gene Hunt's never heard of Torchwood, tries to bluster Captain Harkness into backing down, but even without Sam tugging on his arm trying to point out that they're the _secret_ secret service, Captain Harkness walks all over Gene. It's actually kind of gratifying to watch.

Sam's heard of Torchwood because in 2005, they took a couple of his stranger cases away from him. He tried to raise the kind of holy hell Gene is, and got himself quashed, got told you don't mess with Torchwood, for everybody's sake. He didn't learn his lesson from being told, though--he learned the hard way. Sam would like for nothing more than to let Torchwood take over whatever they're going to take over, because while he was cockblocking Torchwood the first time around, the thing they were hunting killed one of his men. Better to let Torchwood handle the sorts of things they want to handle.

Turns out, Torchwood wants to handle him.

Sam doesn't realize right away, doesn't think anything of Captain Harkness's long interview with Gene. He's too busy trying to stay out of the way to be anything but relieved that Harkness skips him to interview everyone else in the department first. It's not until Chris comes out as Annie's going in, gives Sam a furtive look, and says, quiet-like, "Boss--they're asking questions about _you_," that Sam goes cold.

People Torchwood take an interest in tend to disappear.

Sam gets out, but he hasn't got anywhere to go. He doesn't know anyone but _here_. He hasn't got anything else.

They round him up wandering one of his old neighborhoods, near one of the flats he and his mum lived, after his father left. "They" is just Captain Harkness, driving along apace with him as he traipses down the sidewalk, shoulders hunched. Harkness leans over, opens the passenger door with one hand still on the wheel, rolling along. "Get in," he says.

"Do I get the chance to say goodbye to any of them?" Sam asks.

"No," says Harkness. "We're not planning on taking you out."

Sam stops, and the car stops a beat later, the open door tapping a lamppost. "You're not," he says.

"We had to investigate you, figure out if you were _supposed_ to be here," Harkness says. "If you weren't, we'd be pulling you out so fast your head would spin, and they wouldn't even remember you tomorrow. But time's folded around you. Extracting you would do more harm than good."

"Time," Sam breathes. He's not crazy: he is a time traveller. Torchwood says so. This is the kind of thing Torchwood would know.

"Come on," says Harkness.

Sam gets in the car.

Harkness drives on, past a park--Sam looks out and sees his child-self there, and Harkness says, "We ran his DNA against yours. If you want to show the results to that WPC of yours, convince her you're not crazy after all--"

"You can test DNA?" Sam asks.

Harkness smiles, ironic, and says, "I'm from considerably further forward than you are, Sam."

"And, what, you got hit by a bus?" Sam asks. "Double-decker, maybe?"

Harkness laughs. "In my day, we have a bit more control over the whole business. None of this caught straddling time crap you're going through. If it helps, it's a fragment of a future, not a whole one. Eventually, your voices from the future will stop."

It doesn't help. Sam says, "Then I won't be going back. I won't just--wake up one day."

"No," Harkness says. The laughter is gone. He is gentle, though. "You can't go back. You've already changed too much here. You wouldn't recognize whatever you went back to."

Sam looks at him, really looks at him. "Seems to me," he says, "the further out you are, the more things could change."

Harkness nods. "I'm trying to shape a better future," he says. "At the cost of my own home, my old life. It doesn't exist anymore. Reportedly, I don't even exist anymore. You're lucky you didn't get tossed back any further and have the opportunity to interfere with your own conception. Being severed from history like that is--" Harkness makes a cutting gesture with his hand. "Unpleasant."

"But you're still here," Sam says.

"Time likes me. She likes you, too." They're at the station, the car's idling, Harkness reaches into a pocket and pulls out a business card. "Call me if you get any insoluble paradox issues--people vanishing into thin air, memories altering, that sort of thing. Or even if you just need to talk, one man out of time to another."

Sam takes the card. He opens the car door, looks at Harkness uncertainly, because he can't quite believe he's being allowed to go free. He gets out, and Harkness drives away.

He stands there with a Torchwood business card in his hand, wondering why he's not dead or locked up somewhere or, or, or _home_.

Torchwood couldn't send him home. There is no home anymore.

"Sam? Are you all right?" It's Annie, just come out. She doesn't say anything about the interviews, about Torchwood's invasion, which is apparently over, to judge by the normal traffic in and out of the building. She just waits for his answer, looking anxious.

Home is where the heart is, Sam thinks. He smiles and tells her, "I'm fine."

**Author's Note:**

> Also archived at dreamwidth: <http://jmtorres.dreamwidth.org/999465.html>


End file.
